ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Case material is used to explore the somatic experience as a psychic battleground for conflicts regarding loss. The case report follows one patient who has been seen in psychoanalytic therapy from a Kleinian perspective for seven sessions. Details of the patient's struggle with loss and the resulting loyalty to a somatic retreat are examined. Projective identification, countertransference, containment, and issues of enactment are discussed.In addition, the author considers the technical elements of the analytic situation. In psychoanalytic treatment there is always an immediate transference process triggered the moment a treatment begins. The resulting transference maneuvers can pull the analyst into two primary counter-transference states. Responding to the patient's primitive paranoid or depressive splitting and projective processes, the analyst will slip into the grip of exaggerated versions of the life-or-death instinct and be tempted to act out in one or the other direction.
